Tag Archives: beginner

Hey everybody!
For those of you into Spoonflower, I thought I might share this newest update with you! I gave some of my older cut & sew patterns a spooky Halloween treatment! 🙂 I know it’s still super early, but us sewists know that you have to plan really far ahead to get your sewing done, right?

If you’re not familiar with Spoonflower, it’s a great service with offices in North Carolina and Berlin. They custom print on all kinds of fabric. It’s a great resource for making stuffed animals too because you can print your pattern pieces right on the fabric. It’s perfect for beginners because you don’t have to learn about how to buy supplies and fabric or how to transfer markings.

The new additions are:
• More owl plushies! Which come in a dark shadowy version, a vampire, candy corn, and pumpkin (my favorite)
• More bat plushies! I made up a ghost version, skeleton, and candy corn version. I brought back the zombie from before to be part of the spooky collection, and a new galaxy version took its place!
• More Mer-kitties! But this time I made them into haunting sea witches ❤ They’re not classic Halloween themed, but rather have creepy faces and dark, mysterious colors inspired by sea witch illustrations I found. One is even like a lion fish 😀
• And my Witch Kitties are a new edition! There’s a set of classic Halloween-themed kitties that have capes with skulls, ghosts, candy corn, and bats. And there’s another set that are themed after Hogwarts classes including Herbology, Astronomy, Defense Against the Dark Arts, and Potions.

You can buy them one fat quarter at a time, or buy a whole yard for all 4 of the colors in the collection. The instructions are just slightly different to accommodate the new fabric. You can find all of my cut & sew designs on my Spoonflower page, or a dedicated page here on my site for easier previews 😀
If you try ordering some, I hope you really enjoy it!

Hey everybody!
For those of you into Spoonflower, I thought I might share this newest update with you! I’m going back and revisiting some of my older patterns to give them the cut & sew treatment 🙂
If you’re not familiar with Spoonflower, it’s a great service with offices in North Carolina and Berlin. They custom print on all kinds of fabric. It’s a fantastic resource for making stuffed animals too because you can print your pattern pieces right on the fabric. And it’s amazing for beginners because you don’t have to learn about how to buy supplies and fabric or how to transfer markings.

Hey everybody!
For those of you into Spoonflower, I thought I might share this newest update with you! Some of my other patterns have been given the cut & sew treatment like my bat plush from before.

In the new collection there’s my dolphin plush, narwhal plush, and tiny dino plush. Just like with the bat plush, all of the pieces you need are already printed on the Spoonflower fabric. So all you need to do is cut and sew – no extra fabric shopping or applique required!

Since these patterns weren’t quite as popular as the bat, I stuck with simple classic colors. You can buy them one fat quarter at a time, or buy a whole yard for all 4 of the colors in the collection. The instructions are just slightly different to accommodate the new fabric 🙂

Hey everyone!
Over the last few months I’ve really been getting into Spoonflower – the awesome service where you can get custom-printed fabric. I’ve been using them a lot for custom gifts for friends and family, and I thought I’d try them out to make a custom-printed version of my popular bat plush pattern. This way the fabric itself has a lot of fun details, and the faces are printed right on so it’s super fast to sew up! This is what resulted!

Their custom-printed minky produces really bright and crisp colors, even after washing 🙂 The classic darker colors like the gray and purple still have some white show up in the seams, but it tends to make the finished product look weathered in a cute kind of way. But if that’s not your thing, the lighter pastel ones don’t have that issue at all.

I created 12 different designs — you can check them out by clicking the corresponding thumbnails below. The bats need a fat quarter of minky or fleece to fit all the pieces, but that means if you buy a whole yard you get 4 bats! So you’ll find there are some combination options that let you buy a sampler of 4 bats at once.

The original instructions are changed just slightly to accommodate the fabric, and you can find them here: https://cholyknight.com/bat-plush/. I hope you guys like the options, and of course let me know if you’re interested in any other designs or prints! These were super fun to make and put together ♥

Hi everyone! This infographic I just finished up is on a topic that’s near and dear to my heart. I got a few fans that told me they’re excited to start sewing after seeing my free patterns. But they admit they don’t have the money to get started buying supplies, let alone a sewing machine, so they don’t know when they can start. It’s such a bummer that hit me much harder than usual because I know that feeling exactly. I personally started sewing with random supplies I found around the house and a broken old Singer.
So I thought I might share the tiny steps I went through to earn the money I needed to make sewing a serious hobby. And in the hopes to make it a little less boring, I put it in infographic form! But you can find the detailed information after the graphic. I don’t know if it will help a ton of people, but it was still freeing to get to share a little of my history with you all this way ❤

1. ASSESS WHAT YOU’VE GOT:
Lots of lists out there will give you the rundown of what every beginner sewist should have. It’s usually something like: sewing machine, thread, pins, needles, scissors, rulers/measuring tape, seam ripper, iron, fabric marker, and your fabric. Gather what you have from this list. If you have none of it, the bare minimum of what you need is:
Thread, needle, and scissors.
You can usually find sewing kits with a thread assortment, needles, and maybe some tiny scissors. Some kits are as little as $2-3 (USD). It’s not perfect, but it’ll do if you don’t have a lot of funds!
To tackle the rest seriously, you could make a list of the remaining supplies you need and their dollar amounts so you have a clear goal to aim for.Also, I didn’t know anyone else that sewed when I got started, but if you’re lucky enough that you do, ask around! There’s a very good chance a fellow or former sewist might have some hand-me-down tools and fabric for you.

2. SAVE UP FOR THE REST:a. Take on odd jobs:
I earned the most of sewing money through my brother, who paid me to attach punk band patches to his clothes, haha 🙂 Taking on little mending projects that people sometimes forget about is a great way to get started. This works the best if you have lots of supportive friends and family that know you’re still learning. Ask if they need any of their clothes fixed. With just thread and a needle, you can handle these sorts of jobs:Note: I find it doesn’t hurt to ask specific questions, haha 🙂 Many people forget they have a shirt missing a button in the back of their closet, or a collection of patches they meant to add to a jacket, etc.

Items like these can be sold at craft shows, conventions, and bazaars. Or you could take the plunge and open up an online shop like on Etsy or StoreEnvy.

And from there?
Hopefully from this it might help you earn enough to get the sewing machine you wanted, or build up the fabric collection you’ve wished for! You can start buying nicer fabrics and supplies so you can make better things to sell, or just make things for yourself and fall back on these tips when you need more spending money!

I’ve got a new infographic for you all today! I often get people who tell me that they can’t wait to start sewing, but they don’t have any money yet for any of the tools. And I completely sympathize with that notion. I had pretty much nothing when I started sewing. In fact, my mother’s sewing machine broke shortly before I started getting serious about it – I was hand sewing everything for about a year before it was fixed. There are tons of tips and tutorials out there about what to buy when you first start out, but that runs up a pretty big bill. So I created this chart to give you an idea of what cheaper alternatives you can start with – specifically for plush sewing since that’s what most of my newbie fans gravitate towards 😀

In it is a list of everything I think it absolutely necessary to get started, ranked from good to best depending on what you have the cash for. Some of the items you might already have around the house! Where it gets interesting are the items where all 3 options are suggested for purchasing. Use these as a ‘to-buy’ list if you will. They start off with the more basic, general tools and move up to the more specific ones. So when you have the whole set you’ll be able to tackle more complex and detailed projects!

The only other caveat I would remember is that this only lists hardware, not software like fabric, batting, trims, etc. And, like I said, it’s only the absolute basics. You can get into even more complex stuff down the line if you find you want to sew seriously and often.

Wonderful One-Block Quilting: Quick and Easy Techniques for Small Projects to Full-Size Quilts

Hi everyone! Some exciting news 😀 I have a new book that’s released recently! It’s called Wonderful One-Block Quilting and is kind of a spiritual companion to Quilting Simplified. It’s a great book for beginners to quilting, but this one focuses on patchwork projects that can then be transformed into quilts. Just like Quilting Simplified, it covers all the uncommon and underrated techniques that I’ve gathered to make quilting simple for beginners, but gives you 8 projects to test your skills with. Each project prominently features a certain quilt block, which can then be repeated later in the book to make full quilts. There are fabric requirements and cutting instructions for all the major quilt sizes: baby, twin, full, queen, and king. So whether you want to make patchwork gifts or a quilt for yourself you’re in good hands.

Again like Quilting Simplified, the projects follow a modern aesthetic, not only for the fresh and simplistic look, but also because I think it’s a great attitude for beginners. Modern quilting focuses a lot on experimentation and improvisation, which is so welcoming for beginners I think. What I was most proud of while writing this book is that all of the projects work overtime for you. The design for a simple purse can be transformed into a full bed quilt in every size, so it’s like getting 6 patterns for the price of one. And other projects like the Nesting Fabric Boxes show you how to make a set of 3 boxes of different sizes, so there’s even more value there. And of course like many of my other books, like the ones in the Sew Me! series, the sample projects let you learn through experimentation. Whenever possible, I try to show the whys and hows of every technique so if things go wrong you’re more likely to understand how to fix it 😀 And in the future maybe work out your own patterns!

So if you think this book sounds like something for you, I hope you’ll give it a look! There’s a more detailed page that describes more about the projects, or you can check out the purchase details!